All the press, and quite a few audience members, followed Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry outside for a short question-and-answer session after his speech at a GOP fundraiser in Des Moines on Saturday evening, leaving rival Thaddeus McCotter to speak without any reporters listening.

Ron Paul, who had spoken earlier about his dislike for membership in the United Nations, was nowhere to be seen as Perry, surrounded by a crush of people, repeated his message of the night: that he doesn’t mean to brag, but his record as Texas governor is evidence he can help the national economy.

“It’ll work there, it’ll work across this country,” said Perry, who stopped in West Des Moines and Ottumwa earlier in the day, on his second trip to Iowa as a candidate.

Then reporters peppered him with questions, including about his positions on entitlements. Democratic operatives have circulated information saying Perry thinks that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional — as per his own words in his nine-month-old book “Fed Up!”

“I never said it was unconstitutional,” Perry told reporters. “I look at Medicare just like I look at Social Security. They’re programs that aren’t working, and we ought to have a national conversation about it. You know, those that have said I’ve said they’re unconstitutional, I’m going to have them read the book. That’s not what I said.”

Perry wrote in the book that Americans have been forced to accept Social Security for over 70 years, “all at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

Iowa tea party leader Ryan Rhodes caught Perry’s attention for a few seconds in the crowd. He asked if Perry was going to stand by the words in his book, even as his staff walks back some of his comments. Perry answered that his own words are what people should listen to.

Glancing at remarks typed on white paper during his speech to the fundraiser audience of 380, Perry said others have pointed out that Texas was creating jobs long before he entered the governor’s office.

“And you know what, that is true,” said Perry, who is at the front of the pack of GOP candidates according to Gallup polling of Republicans nationwide released last week. “But as Paul Harvey might say, let’s get to the rest of the story.”

Since he’s been governor, Texas has created more than 1 million jobs while rest of country lost 2.5 million, he said.

“The difference is, we weren’t riding an American wave of prosperity. We were swimming against the current. The point is not to brag, the point is to say as a nation we can, we must, do better, and when I’m president we will.”

Perry didn’t mention any of his GOP rivals, but said under President Barack Obama, one in eight Iowans are now on food stamps.

“That is a testament to the widespread misery created by this administration, that the state known for feeding the world has so many residents now dependent on their government just to pay for food,” he told Republicans who had paid $25 a plate for the dinner.

C-SPAN planned live coverage from the event at Jalapeno Pete’s Cantina at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, but because of Hurricane Irene simply recorded it for later broadcast.

During his remarks, Paul, a fellow Texan and longtime U.S. representative, continued his criticism of spending money on war efforts overseas — and again questioned the wisdom of belonging to the United Nations.

“We don’t even ask the Congress anymore” before going to war, Paul told the audience. “We ask the United Nations and get a resolution. Then we go to NATO and NATO organizes and we become marching troops for NATO. I don’t like that internationalism.

“I don’t even believe we should be in the United Nations and taking orders from the United Nations.”

Paul, who finished in second place in the Iowa straw poll, is in third place nationally, according to Gallup polling.